


Session One, or stop me if you've heard this one before...

by ventrue_antitribu



Category: Vampire: The Masquerade
Genre: Childe & Sire Interactions, Other, Shovelhead, Slight psychological torture, VTM: Sabbat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 05:38:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15430158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ventrue_antitribu/pseuds/ventrue_antitribu
Summary: A fresh Shovelhead meets her Sire officially.





	Session One, or stop me if you've heard this one before...

The room is dreadfully lit, only cast into visibility by some pinhole glow of a lantern down the hall, through the crack of a door. The old furniture, much of which is concealed beneath dust covered sheets, exists in an ever shifting chiaroscuro against an unknowable backdrop of negative space. Everything smells of decaying wood, and--

Cologne, sulfur. The strike of a match and the presence of a figure in the doorway bring about a complete shift of the fall of shadows across the- 

Simultaneous to the hiss of the match is a strangled scream that echoes through the hall. She turns her gaze upwards towards the vaulted ceiling vanishing into imperceptible forever, towards whatever God would see her through this. 

The match is dropped, snuffed, and the room returns to the state and shape she had become acquainted to since finding herself here, whever here is. The tall figure moves from the doorway to the wraparound counter that identifies the room as a perhaps the skeletal remains of a kitchen. His steel-toed boots fall heavy on the old wooden floorboards, producing a creak and echo with each footfall. In sound alone, this drives an inexplicable pain through the roots of the girl's teeth. She buries her face in her hands, clawing at her eyelids.

"Stop that." The sound of a cork punctuates the lightly accented command. The girl's hands fall back to her lap and she rights her posture instantly, unthinking. A cabinet creaks open and a glass thuds against the countertop meaningfully. The trickle of falling liquid heralds the sharp stench of something high proof and expensive.  
The spark of another match sends the girl's mind from empty-hazy to high alert and she is held there on this precipice of animal terror further at the brief crack and roar of a contained blaze that sends the shadows in the room into absolute but fleeting chaos. Even not faced with the flame directly, the girl is overwhelmed with the primal urge to fling herself from the nearest window, anything to put space between herself and the fire. Even the man responsible quiets a trembling growl. 

"Tell me, what do you remember?" The question hangs open, his tone giving no sense of welcoming to response. In the following silence she can hear the shuffling of something, and--

"Siobhan Delaney? Miss Delaney. Is this your name?" He continues to rifle through the billfold.  
"I-"The girl twists in her seat to try and get a look at her interrogator. Before she can adjust enough to catch him in her periphery, the sound of a bootheel slamming into wood bolts her forward in her seat once more.  
"You?" He prompts expectantly, snapping another match from the book.  
"Don't know, I don't know," The girl stammers. He lights the match and she whimpers, squirming but incapable of leaving her seat as another burst of flame roars from the glass before dying back down into darkness and relative silence - or something like it.

There is a stretch of time where she might as well be alone in the room once more, and in this space her senses expand dizzyingly to fill the whole of the room. Past the man behind her, past the threshold, searching down hallways, passing through walls and gathering all signs of activity in ways she knew she should not be able.  
The strangled scream from down the hall again, the groan of metal and the slam of wood on wood, panting, footsteps, breathy laughter and light conversation.  
 _This house is far from empty._  
The notion instills an acute sense of dread in the girl that pierces through the overwhelming blanket of her senses gone haywire. It brings her back to the room with the man, and his book of matches and his heavy boots.   
"It seems like a simple question. That is what the card in your wallet says, Miss Delaney. Not that I should expect it but do you know why you came here?"  
The girl wracks her brain but the harder she thinks, the louder the sound of metal scraping against stone becomes.  
"Where is my camera?" She responds abruptly.  
"I have it."  
"I need it."  
"Why? Is that really what you're concerned with, Miss Delaney? All of this and you want your fucking camera?" A bizarre rage creeps into his voice and he lights another match. This one he allows to throw its gleam around the room for a time before snuffing it in the glass. The girl gasps and the rush of air filling her lungs is immediately and painfully expelled.  
"I'm not breathing," She observes.  
"Oh, you've noticed?" The man chuckles grimly.  
"Why?" Desperate fear creeps into her voice but the way it processes is slow. In her mind's eye, she pictures fire.  
"You're dead, Miss Delaney."  
"I'm dead."  
"Yes, dead. Deceased. No longer living."  
After a brief period of deliberation, "I'm in hell, then?"  
The man guffaws. "Dead, and stupid from the sound of it. Perhaps you were a mistake."  
A mute sense of indignation beginning to form is quickly doused by the sound of another match strike. 

"No, you're in Oregon, Miss Delaney." Even though there are no footsteps this time, she feels him drawing closer, observes the room ahead as the drifting flame at her back shifts its points of illumination. A rough hand brushes the drenched braid away from the back of her neck and she feels the heat of proximity behind her ear before the fire is snubbed between the man's palm and a twist of her hair.   
He allows the burnt out stick to fall to the floor, still uncomfortably warm as it briefly catches on the girl's exposed shoulder. She whimpers and he laughs with a sort of sad, rich sympathy before insinuating his fingertips into a deep gash at the base of her skull, pressing through the bandages covering it.  
The girl’s chest seizes in anticipation of pain that never becomes quite what it should be.  
“Why are you doing this to me?” She mutters. He withdraws his fingers from the gash,   
“Why did you come here?” He presses the question at conversational volume despite his mouth being now next to her ear, close enough to feel his cold, cold lips brushing her skin.   
“I don’t know, I need my camera, I need--”  
“Calm down. You can’t get out of this, you don’t even know who you are. Would you even know where to start, if you could? This situation is entirely out of your control, Miss Delaney. I need you to understand that, and then maybe you and I can start to get along.”  
“Fuck _you_.” Her outburst is sudden enough that she surprises even herself, and as he laughs loudly into the curve of her jaw she is overwhelmed with spine-clawing regret. And then he is gone, back to the counter. He swirls the glass, and the smell of its contents and his cologne grow closer until he stands once more behind her. He rests a hand on the top of her head and gently guides her back so that she is staring up at him; cold, hollow blue eyes and thin lips pursed into an animal grin, angelic face framed with fine, blonde hair, all a conglomeration of conflicting features beautiful and monstrous and decidedly inhuman.  
He laughs softly, a pitying sound, pats her cheek. Then he clutches her jaw hard enough to force her mouth open.  
“Oh you are so interesting, Miss Delaney. I believe we’ll be fast friends.” And he presses the glass to her lower lip and the stench of raw grain alcohol, smoke, extinguished matches, the sensation of the hot glass against her skin start her whimpering pitifully, cheeks running with something cool and viscous that her addled brain doesn’t quite recognize as tears.   
He allows this for some unknowable stretch of time, never allowing her to lower her head nor withdrawing the glass, never easing his vice grip on her cheeks. He hisses something akin to soothing sounds, gently turning her head from one side to the other.  
And then the sound of his boot slamming into the floor invites the feeling of the contents of the glass sliding down her throat and the feeling is such exquisite agony as the matches catch on the back of her tongue and the liquid rakes scores into her esophagus first down, and then-

Blood erupts from between her lips, seeping down her chin, choking all of her senses. The man releases her, allowing her to fall forward as the thick, red liquid pours from her mouth to pool on the floor between her hands. Her shoulders heave, her arms keeping her held above the amassing puddle of blood violently rejecting from her innards tremble. Before they can give out, she feels a pressure on the back of her head that eases her face-down into the cold, sharp-smelling not-quite-blood. He keeps her pinned there beneath his boot, grinding her into it.   
“Please keep in mind, Miss Delaney. You are not in control here.”


End file.
